Major Google Updates Documented

SEOmoz announced they have published the Google Algorithm Change document detailing all “major updates” that happened since the Boston update in 2003.

SEOmoz did it with style in this graphical document:

While I agree with a lot of the updates listed here, I had worked up a list of my own a few months ago. I was extremely selective and this it he list I came up with the list below.

My Google Update List:

Fritz (Summer 2003)

Florida (November 2003)

Austin Update (Jan 2004)

The Sandbox (April 2004)

Bourbon (May 2005)

Big Daddy (October 2005)

Supplemental (Jan 2007)

Paid Links (October 2007)

Dewey Update (Mar 2008)

Vince / Brand (March 2009)

May Day (May 2010)

Caffeine (June 2010)

Scraper Filter (Jan. 2011)

Panda (February 2011)

SEOmoz Google Update List:

Google Toolbar – December 2000

Boston – February 2003

Cassandra – April 2003

Dominic – May 2003

Esmerelda – June 2003

Fritz – July 2003

Florida – November 2003

Austin – January 2004

Brandy – February 2004

Google IPO – August 2004

Nofollow – January 2005

Allegra – February 2005

Bourbon – May 2005

XML Sitemaps – June 2005

Personalized Search – June 2005

Gilligan – September 2005

Google Local/Maps – October 2005

Jagger – October 2005

Big Daddy – December 2005

Supplemental Index – November 2006

Universal Search – May 2007

Buffy – June 2007

Dewey – April 2008

Google Suggest – August 2008

Vince – February 2009

Rel-canonical Tag – February 2009

Caffeine – August 2009

Real-time Search – December 2009

Google Places – April 2010

May Day – May 2010

Brand Update – August 2010

Google Instant – September 2010

Instant Previews – November 2010

Social Signals – December 2010

Overstock.com Penalty – January 2011

Panda/Farmer – February 23, 2011

The +1 Button – March 30, 2011

Panda 2.0 – April 11, 2011

Panda 2.1 – May 9, 2011

Schema.org – June 2, 2011

Panda 2.2 – June 21, 2011

Google+ – June 28, 2011

Panda 2.3 – July 23, 2011

Both SEOmoz and I pulled a lot of this data from this WebmasterWorld thread, which has always done a great job of documenting Google updates. I supplemented my list above with the Google Updates category on the Search Engine Roundtable.

The main difference is that SEOmoz is also including major user interface changes and none specific algorithm changes, including specific penalties.

Overall, it is really good for SEOs and webmasters to get an idea of how Google has updated their index, algorithms and penalties over time so that you can better anticipate the future changes coming from Google.